A wide variety of classical music will be showcased by the Jacobs School of Music’s Wind Ensemble on Wednesday night in Auer Hall.

Conductor Stephen Pratt said the ensemble will play pieces that relate to beauty, in accordance with the College of Arts and Sciences’ Themester, which focuses on beauty.

“Beauty in music can be beautiful harmonies, beautiful melodies,” Pratt said. “But you can’t have all beauty so we also have some very rhythmic and technically oriented loud, fast music.”

Doctorate student and conductor Andrew Chybowski said the concert will feature a wide spectrum of compositions from the old to the new. Though Pratt will conduct most of the show, Chybowski will conduct the third piece, a 2001 piece titled “Millennium Canons,” of the concert.

Chybowski said people outside of Bloomington can enjoy the concert via a high-quality live stream of the event. Pratt said live streaming concerts is beneficial to students whose families want to watch them perform from other parts of the United States or the world.

Pratt said everything the students at the music school do helps prepare them for careers in music.

“For those students who are going to be playing professionally in an ensemble, the experience they get playing helps prepare them for their life’s work,” he said. “So it’s a practical experience to help prepare them for what they hope to do in the world upon graduation.”

Chybowski said the wind ensemble and the school definitely help students prepare for their future careers, especially because the ensemble is one of the most prestigious in the country. Pratt said the ensemble works very hard and practices daily.

“The music itself is technically and musically very difficult and so it takes a lot of practice, a lot of discipline, a lot of concentration in order to provide an excellent performance onstage,” Pratt said.

The group is made up of music students from different levels of experience in their studies, but they have some of the best players in the school in one of the best music schools in the country, Pratt said.

“There aren’t too many places across the country where they can hear music played at this level so frequently,” Pratt said.

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